Michael Blaker studied at the Brighton School of Art under Leslie Cole, Charles Knight and others, and is a writer and artist specialising in etching. In earlier days, he ran his own gallery in Avery Row, New Bond Street, published four issues of his own Art Gazette, and organised an "Artists under Thirty" exhibition at the RBA (Royal Society of British Artists) Galleries. Later he was for ten years editor/designer of the Printmakers Journal, the annual magazine of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, of which he is now a Senior Fellow (R.E.). He has also contributed many articles to Printmaking Today, of which he is an Editorial Consultant, and written extensively for the Artist Magazine, Leisure Painter and Pictures and Prints. He has work in the Tate Gallery and Victoria & Albert Museum Archive Collections, and has exhibited etchings and paintings in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions. Over a long and productive career, he has many other publications and works to his credit. He now lives in Ramsgate, on the Isle of Thanet, where his wife Catriona is an author, and a leading light of the Pugin Society, with a particular interest in the Gothic Revival and in nineteenth-century architecture generally.